Karate Kid: Legends

"The Karate Kid: Legends" is a wonderful film in the classic "Karate Kid" franchise. The script touches on classic elements of the saga, in addition to the combination of karate, kung fu, and boxing. The story, set in New York, manages to convey the themes of culture clash, teenage love, friendship, and family ties, adding a welcome '80s feel to its narrative. The cast gives incredible performances, with the young cast consisting of Ben Wang, Sadie Stanley, Wyatt Oleff, Aramis Knight, and veteran actors Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Joshua Jackson and Ming-Na Wen. The cinematography is spectacular, with interesting camera movements that accentuate the action scenes and capture incredible visuals of the New York locations. The editing works majestically in telling this story that combines action, drama, and comedy. The songs for the film are wisely chosen and fit perfectly with the scenes they feature. Director Jonathan Entwistle's work hits the nail on the head, delivering a great addition to the franchise. "The Karate Kid: Legends" is a stunning film with a retro feel.

What Karate Kid Legends attempts is, in theory, an interesting experiment. It tries to pick up the thread left dangling at the end of Cobra Kai, while also tying it to a completely separate reboot from 2010 that never quite earned its place in the franchise. The result is a film that looks like it should have emotional weight but somehow feels like a corporate brainstorm session disguised as a sequel.

The nostalgic pull that once powered Cobra Kai is back, at least in intention. The show began with something rare, a sense of care for its legacy characters. Ralph Macchio and William Zabka were never reduced to sentimental walk-ons. They were fully fleshed-out leads, still shaped by their past but stumbling through the present with a level of emotional realism that surprised people. For a moment, it worked. The first two seasons had a charm that honored the original films without pandering. You could tell the people behind it actually loved the material.

But when Netflix stepped in for Season Three, something shifted. What began as a lean, character-driven revival turned into an overcrowded, hyperactive drama designed to feed on algorithmic success. It became more interested in spinning off plotlines and inflating rivalries than in deepening the characters it started with. The show leaned heavily on Karate Kid Part III, arguably the weakest installment of the original trilogy, and replicated its mistakes on a larger, glossier scale. What should have been emotionally intimate became bloated. Too many characters, too many arcs, and not nearly enough patience.

By the time the show ended, it was clear that the heart of Cobra Kai still resided in the performances of Macchio and Zabka, but the storytelling had been handed over to a different agenda, one that prioritized noise over nuance. The younger audience loved it, but there's a difference between engagement and emotional investment. Reddit may still be debating the motives of every secondary character, but that obsession with quantity says more about the current media landscape than it does about the story's quality.

So when Karate Kid Legends announced itself as a continuation, expectations were mixed. The decision to set the story three years after the series hinted at a deliberate effort to create space, to reset the tone and allow something new to develop. There is one well-placed cameo that acknowledges the past, but otherwise the film steers clear of the show's tangled narrative. This could have worked. The idea of Macchio returning as a mentor in a stand-alone story held potential. A full-length feature could offer emotional clarity that episodic television no longer had room for. This was a chance to return to character, to quiet moments, to storytelling with restraint.

But instead of using that opportunity, the film makes a strange and ultimately misguided decision. It chooses to merge its narrative with the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid, the one starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. That film, while technically competent and commercially successful, was not a continuation of the original saga. It took the brand name, moved the story to China, and replaced karate with kung fu. Will Smith's production company had purchased the rights, and unsurprisingly, his son was cast in the lead. The film had moments of charm but lacked the emotional architecture of the original. It was a different story entirely, built on different values.

Bringing those elements into Karate Kid Legends creates a dissonance that never resolves. The new protagonist, Ali Fong, arrives in New York from China with his single mother. He is already highly skilled in kung fu, which undermines much of the tension that should come from a student's journey. The familiar beats are all here, a school setting, a love interest, a group of bullies, but they feel recycled rather than reinterpreted. When Mr. Han, played again by Jackie Chan, enters the picture, he brings warmth and screen presence, but not the emotional gravity of Mr. Miyagi. That role, once inhabited with deep humanity by Pat Morita, is impossible to replicate, and this film doesn't find a new angle on the mentor figure to justify trying.

Ralph Macchio returns as Daniel LaRusso, and as always, he treats the character with respect and dedication. He remains the connective tissue of the entire franchise. But the script gives him little to work with. He appears not as a natural evolution of the character but as a symbolic nod to nostalgia. His presence feels obligatory rather than essential. The emotional center never quite finds its balance, and what could have been a meditation on mentorship becomes a checklist of familiar tropes.

The film borrows from Cobra Kai's tone without its tighter emotional stakes. It borrows from the reboot without any real thematic bridge. The action scenes are competent but inflated. And the ending, rather than resolving anything, leaves the door open for more, as if the story has become less about telling something meaningful and more about keeping a brand alive for one more round.

This is not a terrible film. It is watchable, sometimes even entertaining. But it feels like a missed opportunity, a film made by people who knew what worked once but didn't know how to recreate it without repeating themselves. It wants to mean something. It just doesn't earn it.

Ralph Macchio, through all of this, remains a figure of sincere affection. He holds onto the character of Daniel with quiet dignity, and for many people of a certain generation, that is enough to keep watching. But if this franchise wants to move forward, it needs to stop looking sideways. The heart of The Karate Kid was never in the fights or the callbacks. It came from how seriously the story was taken. The sincerity, that created. A coming of age movie that looked the characters and the audience in the eye, is what carried this story for forty years.

KK legends, tried to do it but it got lost on the way.

Still, Ralph Macchio, if you're reading this, you'll always be the Karate Kid to me.

I will need to warn you that you should LOWER your expectations and not see this in theatres, The movie is 1 hour and 34 minutes long, the SHORTEST movie in this entire franchise. And you can absolutely feel how short the movie is, The most dissapointing is how wasted Ralph Maccio's character Daniel LaRusso is... because he geniunely felt like a cameo just like Tobey and Andrew in Spider-Man No Way Home. Atleast the acting in this movie is pretty fine in my opinion.

The story also doesn't help with it literally just the most average story cliches you could ever think of, LIKE COME ON ATLEAST PICK CLICHES THAT ARE BETTER THAN DISNEY CLICHES. They also barely spent enough times to develop some of the characters with how short the runtime is, They tried to make emotional scenes but it just didn't hit because we didn't feel connected with them at all because of how short we spent time on them.

This could've gotten like 5.5/10 for me, but one thing HEAVILY made the movie worse somehow, which is the movie's editing, WHO MADE THEM?????? Because the transitions are literal powerpoint transitions where it made me just dizzy with how often they used it in the entire film, The editing during the finale also made it worse, i get what they we're trying to do. But instead it made the fighting less impactful.

The only redeeming qualities are the fighting choreography's, They are geniunely cool as hell but just super sad they are pretty short aswell.

Overall a 5/10, Its watchable but you'll most likely forget it in a couple of weeks if you're a cinephile, but just normal audiences probably a month.

Dude, I watched Karate Kid Legends and I was impressed. The movie has a lot of action scenes and the main character, called Li or Stuffed Edge, reminded me a lot of Jackie Chan from the past. Daniel appeared little, but he was important to the movie. What I think the movie gets wrong is the way it ends, it focuses too much on fanservice and ends up being very repetitive. Another thing is that the character Li or Stuffed Edge seems to already have a goal, he already seems to deal with things, so it gets a bit boring. Look, it's a movie to watch in the afternoon with your father or family. I would recommend you watch it in the cinema, yes, but it would also be worth waiting for it to come out on streaming, but okay, remember there's a really quick post-credit scene that took my laughs away, like the movie too, so that's it.

This Karate Kid movie is OKAY but unfortunately, the writers just went with the most classic combination of clichés, some examples without spoilers, just what you can see in the trailer:

-boy moves to a new city -boy is bullied -boy meets girl -girl loves boy -bully is the main boss

Yet, the movie manages itself to not be annoying and extense. The pace is certainly fast, but I insist, there's no character development because everything is just too obvious from the very beginning.

There are some Artificial Intelligence effects involved which really surprised me. This is just getting better and who knows? We might see a spin-off of a young Miyagi sensei one day haha.

All in all, I kinda enjoyed Karate Kid: Legends even though it was one of the most obvious storylines I watched.

PS: The best scene will come just before the credits. Trust me.